The production cost of one kilogram of peppers is 26 denars. Those 26 denars cover the seed, the fertiliser, the treatments, the irrigation, the fuel and the labour. The purchase price at some collection points is 15 denars.

So for every kilo handed over, the farmer loses 11 denars. And that is why, instead of going to market, part of this year's crop ends up under the tractors - farmers are ploughing their own fields with the peppers still in them.

Especially the "kurtovska kapija" variety, where under previously agreed prices first class was supposed to be bought at 40 denars a kilo. On the ground, growers say, even the best-quality pepper is being taken for 15 to 18 denars.

The mechanics of the squeeze

Farmers from Pelagonia describe it without a single technical term: "At the collection points they know the farmers' peppers will rot, so they keep the price down. In a month, when there are no peppers left, then they'll give you 80 denars a kilo, but by then you'll have no peppers and it's no use to you."

That is the whole story in three sentences. The goods are perishable, the clock is merciless, and the other side knows it. The farmer has no option to wait - the pepper does not wait. The buyer has every option.

Gjorgji Karakashev, president of the National Agricultural Network, adds the next part: beyond the low price, buyers will not take the lower classes at all, which are left to rot in the fields. Purchasing is haphazard and not continuous.

In his view, the state is also failing to deal with what he calls the "running wild" of buyers and traders who do not respect the agreed price of 40 denars for first class and 30 for first-second.

Sixty denars across the border

In neighbouring countries red peppers are bought at around one euro, or roughly 60 denars a kilo. Four times more than at some of the domestic collection points.

Growers explain the gap by the higher subsidies paid out in the countries of the region - among them Albania, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria - which makes it harder for the Macedonian farmer to compete on foreign markets.

There is a second pressure too. As an example they point to Bulgaria, which they say uses CEFTA mechanisms to restrict imports of Macedonian produce. In the latest case nine tonnes of Macedonian peppers were turned back, and together with the 11.6 tonnes returned earlier, the total reached around 20 tonnes.

So: the price inside is half the cost, the price outside is four times it, and the road out is closed. That is not a market - it is a narrow corridor in which one side knows the other has to pass through.

What they are asking for

The growers' demand is more modest than the story suggests. They are not asking for a higher price than the agreed one - they are asking for the agreed one to be honoured. Forty denars for first class, exactly as the minister went out and said.

"Let him go around the villages, let him walk the collection points, and then we'll see whether the finest pepper is 40 or 15 denars," the farmers say.

When an agreement between the ministry, the growers and the buyers exists on paper, but a different price applies at the collection point, the question is not an economic one. The question is who has the authority to turn up at that collection point - and why it has not happened yet.